


She Screams, She Breathes

by OxfordOctopus



Series: Snakeflower [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Obscurial Harry Potter, Obscurials (Harry Potter), Parseltongue, Pre-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-20 16:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19995070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: (A sisterfic to She Observes, wherein Orchid/Maya doesn't quite survive her time at the Dursleys, lets herself crumple in, and lets the malice out.)The snakes named her Maya, though. The snakes had given her a name when nobody else had, when she knew herself as ‘girl’ or ‘freak’ or ‘it’. Those were not names, they were titles, Maya was the freak, the girl, but they were not her names. Never her names, not even when Petunia screamed at her or when Dudley hit her or when Vernon cornered her. She knew her name, knew her name like she knew venom and spit and bile and noise, the loudness of the world painful and grating in ways that only snakes could explain.





	She Screams, She Breathes

**Author's Note:**

> This includes very heavy and very blunt references to childhood sexual assault, consistent childhood abuse, psychological abuse, and a plethora of other bad things. Viewer discretion, and whatnot.

**1.**

Noise had always been unacceptable. Sobbing, crying, screaming, wailing, speaking, _breathing, moving_ , none of those were for her. She was a tool, a boot cupboard horror; taken out when needed, used, and then put back in with the rest. She wasn’t made of metal or plastic or some hybrid of the two, she was fleshy, she bled and she bruised like overripe fruit but she had known she was a tool nonetheless.

The snakes named her Maya, though. The snakes had given her a name when nobody else _had_ , when she knew herself as ‘girl’ or ‘freak’ or ‘it’. Those were not names, they were _titles_ , Maya was _the freak_ , _the girl_ , but they were not her names. Never her names, not even when Petunia screamed at her or when Dudley hit her or when Vernon cornered her. She knew her name, knew her name like she knew venom and spit and bile and _noise_ , the loudness of the world painful and grating in ways that only snakes could explain, only tell her _why why why_ , why she existed as she was, why she wasn't allowed to Speak and how they knew she was a Speaker anyway.

But the world, so loud, so bright, so _painful_ , a place full of wonder tinged by something worse, by something foul and spoiled, Maya knew she belonged in it. Her place in the world was absolute, born with her like her blood, like her unused voice and the eyes she used to see. The world did not belong to her, no, it did not belong to _anyone_ , the world was too big for any one ruler, but she knew that she belonged to _it_ , that the cupboard under the stairs, decorated with little spiders and their little stories, wasn’t her own, was detached from the world, wasn’t _real_. Never could be real, for nothing so comforting could be.

But she had her duty, now. The snakes had spoken so, she had taken from them gospel, the words needed to survive, stories and plans and _magic_ that Vernon and Petunia both hated so much. They hated her for her freakishness, waited on her for their hatred to be reaffirmed, and used it like a cudgel in hopes of beating it back down into her, as if that would stop it, as if it would stop _Maya_ , a name born of snakes and wood and little hissy things.

So as the door swung open on the beautiful day of her fifth birthday, a smoldering summer wherein Vernon’s hands had started to roam over her body when nobody looked, when Petunia saw and did nothing, when the demands for breakfast were made and she was expected to be docile, complacent, she simply _smiled_.

“No.”

How words could _shock_ people, how they could put them on edge. Vernon recoiled like she’d hurt him, like she’d done to him what he had done to her. Was that guilt she saw? She wasn’t sure, but Petunia brandished her pan nevertheless, intent on beating out the taint, beating out the magic. She had done enough, they had done enough, the foulness that they so hated had already turned to rot like the world around it and leaked off her in waves, spilling through pores and mouth and eyes like her sweat and voice and tears were never allowed. Black smog, thickened into segments like centipedes, yet forming a mostly snake-like appearance; her friend had come to play, her guardian, her snake, the one the garden serpents whisper about, her magic’s malice come living and thriving with all the cruelty the world had shown it.

Maya, nameless, freak, girl, and other names that mattered less than the blood between her thighs or the bruises left near her hips, tilted her head to one side and watched. Watched as Vernon shrunk back, watched as Petunia went pale as the kitchen floor, felt as her face spilled into a cutting smile almost certainly full of bright white knives.

“I don’t like you very much.”

**2.**

She did not like the people who found her.

Obscurial, they named her this time. Maya knew she was still Maya, but the man with the thick beard accompanied by a thin-lipped lady spoke the words not in malice or in reverence but in _pity_. They looked upon her like a victim and Maya knew _better_ , knew better than them or their rules or the wands they wore.

Obscurial, then, was not her name. Obscurial was the name of her snake, the name of the black segmented thing that now curled protectively around her, shifting between various threatening shapes. Inside, green lightning furled and cracked, filling out the belly with surges of light, jarring those who approach too closely. Obscurial opens their mouth at her command, deluges its hatred into the air and sends the group even further back, thunder booming in the wake of its lightning. Obscurial is like a cloud and a serpent both, unable to detach from either concept while the former remains.

They call her by another name, a soothing one. A man with shaggy ink-black hair is accompanied by a wolfish, scarred man who looks just as shattered, looks _terrified_ and loathsome. They remind her of the pictures Petunia isn’t supposed to have, of the ones she took from her broken fleshy mess once Obscurial had retaliated for the time she sat in her seat and watched as Vernon _touched_ , when Dudley wasn’t home, Petunia’s face smitten and red and bleary with a heat that was no good. Of a picture of five people happily cuddling together, moving like the television but without any screen.

Maya nudges Obscurial with the toe of her shoes, forcing it to open and stop curling around her. People remain at a distance, but for good reason; they have no right to her space or her time and if they decided they did she would have Obscurial eat them.

The name again, the one she finds soothing but is untrue, for she is _Maya_ and knows better. “Prongslet?” They probe, again, this time the wolfish man, the one who looks ready to die unlike her. “It’s okay,” the dying wolf tries again, soothing, coaxing. “You’re safe from them now, safe from it all.”

Maya wonders, though.

“Am I?” People recoil, startled by her voice again. Her smile threatens to cut through her cheekbones, teeth bared in a threat that hopefully the dog and wolf _will understand_. Maya pauses, giving her words a moment’s thought. “Are you?”

“Of course we are,” the dog this time, his voice is chapped and hoarse like hers, but growing firmer and smoother. He must scream a lot, Maya notices absently. “I’m certain we are, you’re – you’re Prongslet, you’re Ja—”

The names mean nothing, so Maya doesn’t let herself listen. Her hands are on her ears and she’s _screaming_ again, Obscurial writhes, bashes, cuts through the earth like a knife through butter, leaving behind crevices writhing with green and black taint, pulsing and menacing just the way the world is supposed to be. Wonderland doesn’t exist, reality is cruel and violent and more often than not empty of meaning but _she will make it mean something to others_ , even if she has to rip it apart so that they can _appreciate what she isn’t allowed to have_.

By the time the writhing has stopped they have retreated leagues and she is _glad_ , glad for their fear over her anger. They know their _place_ , their inability to interfere. She will be like a myth and swallow the world if only because she cannot begin to live with knowing there is someplace on the planet where she has been _tainted_ , where she is raw and rotten and already _so very dead_ , where she can make no noises in her cupboard and her body surely still sits, tormented and detached, lashed and beaten and _ruined_.

Her throat feels raw, burny, Obscurial soothes her by brushing up against the scar that marks her as somehow less valuable. It isn’t small, isn’t some jagged little thing, it starts at the top of her forehead and branches out, flowing like true lightning, thinning out until it stops just after fanning out across her eyelids. It is dense, worn down, no longer puckered by red - Obscurial had torn out whatever lingered inside when it emerged - but still fierce and biting, undoubtedly something that would never go away, not even if she wanted it to.

Obscurial draws back and to her side, still pulsing from the space along her back, still segmented and yet leaning more towards snake than it is smog this time. The group approaches again, the man at the front is _livid_ , blue eyes not able to hide the anger. He yells at her, which gets him yelled at by others, he demands she _stop_ and his gaze is faraway, like he’s speaking to another, but Maya doesn’t listen, she doesn’t need to. She watches him detachedly, watches him now that the anger has been lost and feels as he pushes against her in some way, tries to make her _kneel_.

He rocks back with a choked off noise of pain once he puts enough force to get into her, to feel the writhing inside, to feel the maggots that surely exist in her body instead of muscles.

Then, without preamble, there is the sound of _cracking_ , of little breaks in the world. A dozen men in robes and barking orders appear, sticks are raised, and before Maya can tell Obscurial to eat and break and do all the things Dudley could but she couldn’t, something hits her and her vision burns red before she’s gone entirely.

**3.**

The Institute for Magically and Mentally Maladjusted Minors is not a bright place. Oh, Maya knows they try to be, they clean their walls and they keep staff who are only looking out for them, who won't put a hand on them or try to interfere, but it is a rather backwater sort of place. It is the place where Muggleborn - a stupid concept, really - and unwanted Pureblood - also a stupid concept - end up when things can’t be remedied by yelling and screaming.

Or at least, it is if she believes Luna.

Luna is a unique case, Maya finds. Unlike Maya, who knows in her heart of hearts that the world is the world, that reality is reality, and yet rejects it all anyway, Luna might very well be completely and totally insane. She went around the bend, they say, ‘Loony Lovegood’, but then again they call her ‘Mad Maya’, so it’s not like she puts much emphasis in the words of others.

Maya’s been at the Institute for the last two years and they took Obscurial from her in one. She’ll never forgive them for it, not until she’s a corpse and long withered. She misses him, misses the hiss of lightning and the inherent threat, misses the ability to destroy and break and they call this a behavioral disorder, they call it long-term psychological damage from being frequently abused as a child.

Luna’s reason for being at the Institute is completely unknown, or at least Maya is pretty sure nobody but the upper staff knows the true reason. They bunk together as the two most unwanted patients, both making up equal ends of the mentally ill spectrum; with Luna accepting whatever happens to her, and Maya still being punished for the time she broke both of a boy’s legs after he made fun of her for being upset that Obscurial was gone.

“I can see you’re dealing with new nargles,” Luna blandly spoke, her voice a pitch too stiff for it to be anything but forced.

Maya glanced back at the blonde, trying not to squint. “Can you really see?”

Luna smiled. It was like the one Maya makes, all teeth and promised hurt. She likes it.

Stuffing her foot back onto the ice pack she had placed on the top bunk - her bunk - and swivelling so that she was half leaning over the bar, Maya spared the girl below a sordid look. She gets one back, one that’s fighting back tears, one that is uniquely vulnerable for a girl who had once baldly told a staff member that he had an infestation of ‘Purple-Veined Cocks’ in his throat.

“Do you want to close the door?” _‘Do you want to talk?’_

The door is closed, Luna is soon up on the top bunk with her, squishing her swollen ankle to the side even as Maya promises her agony and a thousand snakes in her knickers, though she’s spitting in Parseltongue seeing as it’s difficult to speak in English when there’s pain involved.

“They said Da’ is unfit to take me back.” Luna explained, obviously trying to keep her voice level.

Maya didn’t say anything, unsure how to respond.

Luna doesn’t seem to notice. “Said Ma’s ritual broke him too, just she died and he’s just dying slower and going more insane for it.” There’s a pause, as if the blonde has just understood something rather important but is sure she didn’t miss it. Blue eyes meet green, wavering just enough that Maya’s urge to hit someone isn’t incited. “I think that’s why his hair is so white. I thought it was due to the Humperdinks.”

“What’s a Humperdink?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

**4.**

Hogwarts.

It’s a place, Maya supposed. She was forced to come a year later than most, though that’s due to a bunch of shit she didn’t bother to listen to. She’s technically twelve, but since her birthday’s basically at the end of July _anyway_ it’s not like it’s a huge leap for them to just shove it a few months forward. Instead of July 31st, it’s now September 31st, which is whatever, seeing as it didn’t really make much of a difference anyway.

Her first impression of the school comes at the words of a boy with blonde-white hair. He calls Luna insane and Maya a mudblood, which is just typical, seeing as it’s another ‘m’ word to mix with her name whenever someone’s feeling especially desperate for a foot in the knees. The train chugs on and they’re joined by a ginger who goes by Ginny so at least she’s not alone with names that have a bad habit of mixing well with common-day insults.

(“What do you mean ‘ginger’ is an insult?” “I don’t know, shouldn’t it be?”)

The giant is overbearing, looking at her like something broken and worrisome. The squid is too friendly for her to trust it, the old lady from all that time ago is back and Maya has to hold herself back from spiting her for it. A song is sung, a hat is placed, and Maya’s deposited in Ravenclaw near instantly, Luna following shortly thereafter and then Ginger Ginny in good order. There’s certain liberties you get for having a last name that starts with an E, especially when it comes to alphabetical lists.

The food is awful, but at least the snakes are friendly. There are an unnerving amount of the reptiles for a place in a miserable place like Scotland, but that’s not really something to dwell too deeply not on, not unless Maya wants a headache and another lecture from some rare magical snake species that totally finds the climate comfortable – thank you _Hermione_ , Maya prays the second year will shut _up_ but god dammit that’s clearly a pipedream.

At least the rooms are nice.

The Institute still expects for her to talk to her handler about her issues, worried that she might bring Obscurial back but some miserable part of Maya is pretty damn sure that’s impossible. Whatever they did, whatever emotional change they instilled in her? That can’t be taken away, ever. Maybe if she hated herself more, maybe if she didn’t just loathe the skin she wore and found no comfort when Luna slid into her bed the night before their first day, only then could she imagine Obscurial coming back.

Classes are too easy, Maya finds. Luna has more trouble, but that comes down to how others treat her and her ways of coping with the world around her. Nobody realizes that the little fairies she imagines are largely metaphors for things she doesn’t want to face, and if Maya isn’t starting to think like her shrink she’ll eat her hat. Of course, her shrink wouldn’t break Cho’s foot with a well-placed heavy book in the library, but then again her shrink doesn’t believe in using ‘violent measures’ and nobody _saw_ her do it, so it’s not like she can get into trouble for it.

All things aside, school life moves at a sedate and largely non-confrontational pace. Of course, Ginny ends up having her journal sucked in by the restricted section for some reason, with the book vanishing among the myriad of shifting bookshelves and wailing alarms, but Maya promised to buy her one out of her own pocket money when it came time for christmas - this time her shrink even agreed with her - and so there’s no real harm or foul, though Ginny still look put off. Apparently the book could talk back to her, though if the book was anything like that hat Maya wouldn’t trust it whatsoever.

The piece of discarded knitwork called her ‘Orchid’ of all things.


End file.
